Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

Thu Sep 10 21:38:59 UTC 2015

On Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 3:13 PM, Landon Stewart <landonstewart at gmail.com> wrote:
> "Email Disclaimers: Legal Effect in American Courts"
> - http://www.rhlaw.com/blog/legal-effect-of-boilerplate-email-disclaimers/
>
> "Automatic e-mail footers are not just annoying. They are legally useless"
> - http://www.economist.com/node/18529895

I don't have a handy reference, but as I understand it there's a legal
problem with confidentiality boilerplate showing up on a mailing list:
it demonstrates that the sender "doesn't mean it." A defendant in a
case involving some other email can claim that the words mean nothing
because the company's emails always say that even when they're
obviously broadcast to the public in general. The defendant can claim
a good faith belief that they didn't mean it this time either. And the
court will agree.

Regards,
Bill Herrin

-- 
William Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
Owner, Dirtside Systems ......... Web: <http://www.dirtside.com/>